Chapman's Robin Harris slithers out of a shoe string tackle by Whittier College's Josh Pride and scampers for four more yards Saturday against Whittier College. ROD VEAL, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

ORANGE – Chapman University plays football on the Division III level, which satisfies one’s nostalgia for 240-pound defensive linemen.

It also manages to play the game without midnight arrests or $100 handshakes.

There are no athletic scholarships. Players apply for scholarship money based on need. It helps that Chapman’s endowment is in the $150 million range, which mitigates the $20,920-per-semester tuition bill.

So Coach Bob Owens has to thread the needle to find players who can handle academics the way the regular students do, and yet can play football, and yet don’t play it well enough to get offers from the semi-professional world.

The Panthers had kept the needle moving, with a 5-0 start and a 17-7 lead over Redlands on Saturday night.

But Redlands stormed back for a 21-17 lead and got a fourth-down interception from Connor Hoffman (Servite) to grab first place in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) standings.

Even without puffed-up behemoths and world-class sprinters, it was a crisp, hard-contact football night.

So how do you find players when Rivals.com can’t tell you where they are?

“It’s a balancing act,” Owens said in his office on Thursday. “You have a kid who’s an offensive lineman, and he’s 6-foot-4 and 230. Well, God made him 6-foot-4. He’d still be 6-4.

“But if he puts on 40 more pounds over a four-year period, what do we have? Or if he benches 230 pounds when he comes here, and he’s benching 280 when he walks out of here, what do we have?”

You have someone like Steven Santana, a Fountain Valley alum who leads the Panthers in sacks and tackles for loss. He is 5-foot-10, 220.

“I graduated from LaVerne,” Owens said. “I never looked at this as a Division III program.

“To me, there are two types of programs. Good ones and bad ones. The rest, you can just read between the lines.”

Kean Stancil had been involved in bad ones, at least bad ones for him.

He was a high school quarterback at Amador Valley, in the Bay Area suburb of Pleasanton. He was pretty good. His team only lost 31-21 to mighty Concord De La Salle, although Stancil still remembers his own two fourth-quarter fumbles. But his only real offer was a walk-on invitation at Eastern Washington.

Stancil did get a ride to Hastings College in Nebraska, an NAIA school and the alma mater of Tom Osborne. “But it didn’t fit me academically or athletically,” Stancil said, “and when I came back I wasn’t even thinking of football anymore.”

Stancil did not play at Grossmont College. Then the game reeled him back in. He visited Chapman, and Owens took him to the third level of Ernie Chapman Stadium, the most glittery stone on this jewel box of a campus. That’s all it took.

Last year Stancil was one of three quarterback who was injured at seaon’s end. Now, with starter Michael Lahey back, Stancil is doing basically everything else. He came into Saturday’s game averaging 37 yards per kickoff return and led the Panthers with five rushing touchdowns.

In the first four days of fall practice, running back Jeremiah McKibbens and defensive back Josh Irvin both were injured, for the season. “That’ll make you blink,” Owens said.

But with Lahey returning from injury, Owens’ mosaic of pistol/spread/no-huddle rolled up 52.8 points a game. Redlands, which hasn’t given up more than 21 points this year, put a stop to that.

Still, the Panthers preserved one streak Saturday. They have been in the red zone 31 times and have scored 31 times, with 27 touchdowns.

Now, with all this talk about perspective, Chapman football is not a recreational activity. Players are pushed. But they aren’t discouraged from taking classes that might demand more than subject-verb-predicate. In fact, any scheduling conflicts are settled in favor of the classroom.

“There are no free passes here,” Owens said. “Six of the seven years I’ve been here, including this year, our team GPA has been over 3.0.”

After a Sunday afternoon meeting and an off day Monday, the Panthers begin meeting at 5:30 on Tuesday through Thursday and then practice until about 9:30.

“A lot of late dinners and some late study sessions,” Stancil said, “but when you look at the academics, there really isn’t any other way we can do it. And it gives you some free time during the day.”

If all works out, Stancil will use that degree he’s earning in strategic corporate communications and “work in some sort of brand development. It’s a matter of learning how brands develop and maybe reach new demographic groups.”

At Chapman, and at its peers, football is where it was intended to be. Part of the brand, not the whole store.

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